


The French Student

by LaTerraNova



Series: The French Student [1]
Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Frankenstein - Freeform, Frankenstein Monster, Gay Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Literature, M/M, Medical Trauma, Modern Era, Porn with Feelings, Science Experiments, Sleepy Cuddles, Smut, dominant victor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 19:59:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14119692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaTerraNova/pseuds/LaTerraNova
Summary: Robert Walton goes to Geneva to practice his French, but gets more than he bargained for in a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger.Victor Frankenstein is everything that he admires - well educated, scientific, and fluent in the language that Robert desires to speak.  But what happens when you hook up with the town heretic (more importantly, WHY are they that?), and are Victor's habits as normal as they initially appear? Part of a series.





	The French Student

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing sex

It was an afternoon in late spring when Robert Walton first arrived in Geneva. He walked a great deal through the cobblestone streets, beneath a grey and washed-out sky, with a hole in one of his shoes that made his sock uncomfortably soggy. Few people were around to enliven the panorama, perhaps because it was a Sunday and less-than-pleasant weather. The cafes that lined the square were bringing their tables inside, and he dragged his feet despondently and looked about himself for signs that the hostel was anywhere near. His phone had died at the airport, he had forgotten his charger, and he did not know where he was going. He felt like a vagrant, making eye contact with a young waitress who looked at him blankly beneath her red beret before turning back inside the old-fangled bakery. He kept walking, down one of the narrow alleyways hemmed in by crumbling ochre buildings that would have appeared very different if graced by sunlight. Renaissance architecture: charming if you were not wet-through and keeping your head down to avoid the rain. He noticed a man sitting on a step, smoking.  
‘Excusez-moi, savez-vous où se trouve l’auberge Polidori?’  
‘Your accent is terrible,’ the man stared at him. ‘No, sorry,’ he looked away and continued to drag on his cigarette, as though lost in thought. His hand had a slight tremor - slight, but noticeable - and he looked to be in his early thirties, wrapped in a faded black frock coat that might have been smart once but had several buttons missing and the shape worn out of it. His hair was damp from the rain, which he scarce seemed to notice.  
‘Do you have a charger - phone charger - that I can borrow for a few minutes?’  
‘I don’t have a phone,’ he looked to him again and watched intently. ‘Do you have a room there?’ He spoke in a tone neither hard nor unfriendly.  
‘Not exactly - I was going to ask them.’  
‘It’s busy this season - all the vile _touristes_ \- so you should find out if the hostel is booked before you go knocking on doors. You look tired. Use my internet, if you would like to.’  
‘That would be great, thank you,’ Robert said in some relief. 

The dark-haired man led Robert to a computer in the corner of his kitchen; which was interestingly filled with drooping plants and old, brown-paged books, most of which Robert did not recognise although he was like to consider himself well-read. One beside the keyboard had _de occulta philosophia libri tres_ scrawled across it in gold emboss, and he picked it up and put it aside as Robert sat down, continuing to watch him with a strange, impenetrable expression in his pale eyes, before asking, somewhat out of the blue, ‘Are you hungry?’  
‘Yes,’ Robert responded without thinking, then blushed, cursing himself in case it came across as bad manners.  
‘Good, me too,’ and he began to get pots and pans out of the cupboard. ‘Do you like risotto?’ 

_The hostels were all booked, Robert soon found out. Even the more expensive ones with private rooms._

They ate dinner together. The rain stopped. Outside the large window behind them the sky began to darken, trails of red and gold light peaking through the clouds and streaking its expanse. The plants on the windowsill became shadows. 

The food was good - he knew how to cook - and at first he was quiet and reserved until he sensed Robert luring him into conversation, at which he began to speak eloquently and in detail on any subject suggested to him. Mostly historical, sometimes literary, and always with a self-awareness that fully expressed itself in the occasional wry comment, accompanied by a sort-of smile that did not quite reach his eyes. Although he was very thin, and his cheekbones prominent in a way that one often sees with the starved, he ate well and poured them a glass of wine each. Robert was unused to the drinking of wine in this manner, but he tried to drink slowly and, as he sipped, something inside of him mellowed. He found that he was staring at the man a bit too often and, even worse, that he was aware of it and would look right back at him as he did so. ‘Don’t trust our régional ones, they’re horrible and people will lie to you. But then you are English, and what do the English know about _alcool?_ ’ He shrugged sardonically, and Robert tired to avert his gaze from the lovely eyes. He chattered away - in part to pick his mind, in part to distract himself. Never had he known a man so uncomfortably alluring. 

Suddenly, he began to cry. Large tears dripped down his cheeks and he began shaking. Robert did not know what to do so he watched until he stopped, apologised, got up and went to clear the plates away.  
‘What’s your name?’ He asked when he returned.  
‘Victor.’  
‘I like you a lot, Victor.’  
And for the first time a real smile spread over Victor’s face, which made him look beautiful. 

_Victor asked him if he would like to use one of his rooms until he found accomodation. ‘I know I’m a stranger and that is probably a worrying offer, but if you want to take it you are more than welcome to.’ Of course he did._

_‘It’s where I usually read,’ Victor said, showing him to a small room with a view over the medieval roofs of Vieille Ville, and a cosy, wooden bed with an old floral-pattern duvet that was at once homely and inviting._

Robert noticed that there were large scars along Victor’s arms that continued down to his wrist, vertical along the main arteries. ‘What happened?’ He asked, tentatively.  
‘I experimented on myself when I was a student. To better understand the contraction of certain fibres in the artery wall of a living being. It helped my work, at the time.’ He said carelessly, as though this were an everyday thing.  
‘Wasn’t that painful?’ He felt a horror, looking at them. All white and jagged, and even pinkish in places.  
‘Not if you know how to do it properly,’ he shrugged, lying. What obsessive urge had led him to slice his own arms open for science? Robert could not help but wonder. 

Despite himself, he began to feel as though he were loosening up around Victor. He might have been the strangest person that he had ever met, but all in the space of a few hours he sat in a battered armchair in the living room, his wet sock had been removed, and his suitcase lay open in the little bedroom. He even started to wonder what his lips would feel like on his - and if it would feel right - but he tried to shake the thought. It was inappropriate; he was a guest. He really opened up to him, though, admitting that he came abroad partly because of his loneliness. He loathed to sound vulnerable but something about Victor drew him out of himself without fear of judgement and he found himself confessing, even if tip-toeing around the issue somewhat, that he was generally disliked and he had no friends. ‘Although I have been studying French for around a year and I wanted to improve it.’  
‘Perhaps we should talk in French then,’ Victor gave a half-smile, and added ‘Do you wonder if it’s all in your head, that people don’t like you?’  
‘Maybe,’ Robert paused, ‘I often ask myself that.’  
‘It’s a very arbitrary world, and how you act is what you get, it’s like typing in codes. That’s how I see it. You isolate yourself and don’t play the right code,’ Victor told him, looking as though he wanted to elaborate but he did not.  
‘You’re not playing me, then?’  
‘No,’ he said quickly and in surprise. With a flirtatious courageousness that came over him, Robert added ‘Well I would not mind if you did.’  
Victor just stared at him. Then he took Robert’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Calm yourself, Casanova. Would you like to see the lake? It’s very pretty at night.’ 

_Lights glittered across the waters of Lake Geneva. The alps loomed large in the near distance, as though suggesting to the mind something of possibility, of the grander scale of the world that was out there, with their glacial peaks grazing the sky. The clouds had drifted, and the night was clear and starry. No wonder the poets were drawn to this spot, Robert thought, smiling inwardly. He could anticipate summer in the air. ‘Come this way!’ Victor grabbed his wrist gently and pulled him so that they were walking along the grass beside the jetty. ‘Time, such a fucked up concept, isn’t it? Just think, Robert, some two hundred years ago, who stood in your place, your very place right now! Perhaps they still do, in a different world...yes...I knew someone who once saw a Roman, coming down the street but just the top of him, for the road level had changed since his time…’_

They sat eventually because Victor had to admit that he ‘was not very fit.’ In fact he fell quite silent beside Robert in the grass and began absent-mindedly plucking at strands of it, gazing across the black waters with distance in his eyes. He lit a cigarette. ‘You seem tired, Victor,’ Robert said and - this was risky, he told himself - he put an arm around him. Victor leant back against his chest, sighing deeply. He shivered a little but did not say anything. This was riskier - Robert rested his lips gently against his neck, nose buried in his hair. He smelt wonderful, and he wanted to tell him that without coming across as creepy, but did not think it could be done. It was a natural, warm scent - no cologne - that both comforted and aroused him. As soon as his lips touched the skin, Victor turned around and said, softly, ‘You’ll know this. “As the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea.”’  
‘What?...’ Robert trailed off, staring him directly in those eyes that flashed frighteningly now.  
‘“What are all these kissings worth…?”’ Victor encouraged.  
‘If thou kiss not me?’ Walton replied, finally catching on but still, very hesitant.  
‘Précisément,’ Victor whispered. He looked at him. He seemed to carefully analyse Robert’s expression before leaning in and kissing him delicately. A light peck. Experimental. Robert went with it fully and it turned into something sloppy and passionate. He lay his hands lightly on Victor’s hip bones and thought about how he would like to kiss those too, would like to make his way down his body in a trail of kisses...wanted to…he gently pushed Victor into the soft grass, and kissed him there firmly noting how he tensed with pleasure, his coat spread out behind him. ‘So you want to shove me around?’ Victor grinned, looking up at him. 

At the house, as soon as the door closed, Victor embraced Robert with a sort of ferocity and kissed his neck, finding by some miraculous providence a particular spot that, when his mouth moved over it, sent a thrill down Robert’s spine and caused him to exhale, trembling with lust. He came out in goose bumps and held onto Victor, nails digging into his sides. Victor began to strip and Robert saw on full display what he had imagined since meeting him. He was thin but nonetheless attractive, delicate... _that_ certainly wasn’t. He thought about the cries that he wanted to coax from that pretty mouth.  
‘Take your clothes off,’ Victor commanded, ‘Or do I have to do it for you?’  
‘I would like you to.’  
Victor unbuttoned Robert’s shirt with considerable dexterity, each loosening causing more chills over Robert’s skin.  
Victor ran his hands over his chest and down his sides, pressing his palms into the warm skin.  
‘So big...so strong,’ He said in a low murmur. ‘I bet you have a massive cock.’  
A tension began to grow between Robert’s thighs and he looked at Victor desperately. Victor pulled his jeans down, almost ripping them, and took the end of his cock into his hand. ‘Oh Robert, you are dripping.’ He bent down and ran his tongue along it, circling the swollen head and licking the precum from the pink tip. He sucked once, twice...and stopped.  
‘Please,’ Robert whimpered.  
‘I want you to fuck yourself on me,’ Victor stood up, seizing him. ‘I want you to force me down,’ he demanded. 

Victor was tall but he was light, and Robert easily spread him on the bed, grabbing his wrists. He hesitated at the roughness of skin around the horrible scars, but continued to hold them to pin him down, reckoning that it would offend him if he let go and did not- it might seem squeamish of him to refuse. He kissed Victor’s mouth and Victor bit him, which made his cock harden more but also - slightly - angered him, as he could taste the hot saltiness of blood.  
‘Fuck me,’ Victor said.  
‘I’ll make you forget English, you insolent whore,’ Robert replied, lowering himself onto him. He kissed him all over - his neck, his chest, his belly, his thighs - everywhere that was not his cock, and Victor demanded, again, that he put it in him, but he replied ‘No, this is for leaving me unfinished,’ and drove him wild with kisses, refusing to touch his erect member until neither of them could take it any longer. 

Victor winced in pain when Robert entered but at the first thrust the pleasure came. He was in such a state of arousal at this point that his cock was swollen large and drooped over his belly as he lay on his back and Robert fucked him from the side of the bed, moving deeper and deeper into him. Victor gripped the bedsheets, sweat gleaming on his pale chest, and cried out. Robert began to groan loudly, the pleasure breaking into a crescendo, and when he came he positively exploded, as did Victor, who came all over the sheet. He lay back in the pillows, limp with satisfaction and panting. When Robert cuddled up to him, he gently took his wrist and kissed the scars. 

‘My medication makes me tired, I am so sorry if I fall asleep on you,’ Victor said, sitting before the bedside table with various packets of pills. ‘Although I will try not to, I really will try.’  
‘It’s okay,’ Robert said, taking his hand.  
‘I never know how much to take,’ he admitted, sighing. Robert fetched him a glass of water.  
‘Tap water is safe in Geneva?’  
‘Yes,’ he smiled up at him.  
Robert put his arms around him and cuddled him close. He did become very drowsy and lay against him, Robert stroking his hair and him holding onto the other man, saying ‘I will look after you during your stay.’  
Robert thought it more likely that he would be looking after Victor, but said nothing. 

They lay down underneath new sheets and cuddled up together.  
‘Victor?’  
‘Yes…’  
‘If there is anything you need, if you need to talk to someone, don’t hesitate,’ Walton lay his head in the crook of Victor’s shoulder.  
‘Mais en français,’ Victor said smiling, eyes closed. ‘You need the practice.’


End file.
